After over five years of being heavily medicated for my bipolar illness, I am just crazy enough to go off the meds and try to conceive. With a whole team of professionals monitoring my progress and an amazingly compassionate husband to catch me when I fall, I am ready to start trying to get pregnant. This is my journey through the insane process...

Thursday, November 29, 2007

I gotta say that I miss getting high. The high I refer to here is the one I enjoyed via good wine. I miss my wine very much. But as you all know, no wine is a very small price to pay for a healthy pregnancy. On Tuesday, I got my high in a whole new way, a better way even. We heard the heartbeat on Tuesday. It may be said that it has sent me into a somewhat hypomanic phase, but in the best possible fashion. Plus, on this kind of high, I can drive. But let's be honest, I really have no business being inside baby stores (or any stores for that matter). Any version of manic can cause excessive spending in me. And I don't have money to pay my bills much less buy clothes for a theoretical baby. So I occupy myself by surfing amazon and putting things on my registry, which is more of a wish list really because I haven't actually told anyone about it. For now, I will ride that heartbeat wave at 150 bpm. Whoohoo.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I am kind of stunned that my birthday keeps coming around every fucking year. That should tell you how either very daft or morbid I am. But, I think you already knew both of those things already.

It hasn't exactly been a stellar birthday day, sadly. I woke at 6am to go to my second hearing for my second real live client. It actually went pretty well as disability hearings go. Of course, no ruling is given on the spot so it will be several weeks until I know how it really went. Then I was off to class until 6pm. From there, I went to the wine shop for work. I'm there right now working, okay maybe not working that hard (seriously just the act of sitting anywhere besides my home feels like work though). I get off (oooh, wouldn't that be a nice present) of work at 9:30pm. And, then I'll stay awake just long enough to have a Popsicle for dinner. Yum.

But, let's end on a good note. Tomorrow I will be at the 12 week mark. I am just going to try and appreciate what that is supposed to mean (to normal women) for as long as possible.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

At the beginning of my journey in trying to conceive, I confronted a nasty little bug called bacterial vaginosis (BV). The little guys had taken up residence in my cooter and were breeding much faster that I was. It was pretty easy to fix though. A good dose of antibiotics and the bad guys had been flushed from their home.

Last week, I got a cryptic message on voicemail from my OB saying that he needed to talk to me about my test results. The week before that, my OB had happily left a message on my voicemail telling me that my progesterone was at the right level and don't worry. This time, though, there was no voicemail of happiness and no "all is well" messages. So, of course, I assumed the worst. Within about 2 hours of hearing the cryptic message, I had successfully diagnosed myself with HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and almost-dead-baby sydrome (you know, just for good measure). More amazingly, I had driven my husband into the same sort of frenzy.

Within those two short hours, I had left 3 messages with my OB's office staff. I am pretty sure there is a note in my file now saying something like, "JUST CRAZY" in 24 point bold red font. Nevertheless, the doctor did finally call me back and said that I have BV again. Nice. He will treat me with antibiotics once I am "safely" at the 12 week mark. In the meantime, Husband did some research regarding BV. While the damn BV is labelled as an STD, they don't actually know how women contract it. In fact, there was some suggestion that women don't get it from sexual contact with men, but instead catch it from sexual contact with other women.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Sorry for the typo on my last post regarding the bicornuate uterus and resulting confusion. I notice that the more frazzled I get, the less editing that I do. As such, I end up with some mighty misspellings and strange puncuation.

So yesterday, Husband and I made the 30 minute drive to my new OB's office. With the Fall colors, it was a lovely and restful drive with the hubbie. And by all accounts, my OB is truly fabulous. While he is a bit rough around the edges, he is thorough and easy to talk with. I clued him in to my concern about the funky uterus notes on my sonogram results and he seemed skeptical. However, the scan changed that significantly.

Upon the first viewing with the dildocam, all we saw was a surpisingly small and quite empty uterus. Somehow, I was calmed by the fact that my doctor showed significant concern. It's almost as if by him being concerned, I know I will have to fight less to get the attention that I need regarding my medical care. And so I breathe a little sigh of relief that I have a medical advocate. Anyway, he probed and shifted that dildocam around quite vigorously and found the problem. As the plain of view shifted, we saw an empty sphere, then two empty spheres, and finally the spheres merged to reveal a smudge in the center complete with a flicker for a beating heart and some motion as the little guy dodged the image. It was fairly exciting, I must say. And my doctor was visibly relieved and thrilled all at the same time.

So it's fairly clear at this point that I have a bicornuate uterus and there is a septum. What isn't clear is how big that septum is and if and when it will be a problem. For now, nothing can be done but wait and see what happens. From where the little guy is now, it looks as if he will grow into the right horn.

On the way home yesterday, I thought about how people call a bicornuate uterus "heart-shaped". As you may imagine, this image doesn't quite do it for me. I prefer the devil's horns image. My evil uterus and it's horns from hell.